posted at 6:41 pm on October 18, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

WASHINGTON, DC – The White House is pleased to announce the resumption of a limited schedule of East Wing and Executive Residence tours, beginning on November 5th. Additionally, the White House will be opening its gardens and grounds to visitors on October 26th and 27th.

Members of the public interested in scheduling a tour of the East Wing and Executive Residence should contact their Member of Congress.

For a tour of the gardens and grounds on Saturday, October 26th from 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM, and Sunday, October 27th from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM, members of the public can obtain a free, timed ticket at the Ellipse Visitor Pavilion located at 15th and E Streets on Saturday and Sunday beginning at 7:30 AM. Tickets will be distributed — one ticket per person (including small children) — on a first-come, first-served basis. …

Secret Service spokesman Robert Novy said the tours would continue through Jan. 15 and occur three days a week, on average, though the exact number of days would vary. Before the White House halted the tours in March, they had taken place five days a week.

“Last year’s sequestration came midway through the fiscal year, and we were unable to adjust or re-allocate remaining funding to continue tours while still ensuring enough funding remained to meet all operational needs and avoid furloughing our employees,” Novy said. “In light of the new fiscal year, the Secret Service is confident that through the Continuing Resolution tours can operate on a limited schedule while still meeting operational requirements.”

What do you suppose prompted this? Is it perhaps that they feel they have finally wrung any and all possible benefits out of their sequestration-inspired Washington Monument Strategery, or that the nation perked up its ears to this kind of errant behavior after the petty way in which they handled the shutdown in parks and even the tiniest scraps of government lands all across the country? Whatever the reason, it certainly took them long enough.

Blowback

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What do you suppose prompted this? Is it perhaps that they feel they have finally wrung any and all possible benefits out of their sequestration-inspired Washington Monument Strategery, or that the nation perked up its ears to this kind of errant behavior after the petty way in which they handled the shutdown in parks and even the tiniest scraps of government lands all across the country?

Is it perhaps that they feel they have finally wrung any and all possible benefits out of their sequestration-inspired Washington Monument Strategery, or that the nation perked up its ears to this kind of errant behavior after the petty way in which they handled the shutdown in parks and even the tiniest scraps of government lands all across the country?

Probably both.

And I stand side-by-side with GarandFan that vets should Barakade the visitor enterances of the White House in protest. I also think they should show up at the National Park Service building and do the same.

To this day, every time someone mentions the Lincoln Bedroom, I hark back to the Clinton years, and how Democratic donors were given perks like a night in that bedroom. The worst I ever heard was listening to Danny DeVito go into some graphic descriptions of his and Reah Perlman’s sexcapades around every inch of the Lincoln Bedroom.

The National Park Service director told Congress on Wednesday that he had to shut down the open-air memorials on the Mall during the government shutdown because of terrorism, saying that closing them was the only way to protect them “in a post-9/11 world.”

Director Jonathan B. Jarvis also said his agency had received intelligence showing an increased threat of danger since the shutdown began – though he would not tell two House committees what those warnings were.

I’m sure we all know that many battles from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars were fought on national parkland. The Park Service obviously fears that that could happen again.

Now that Obama’s “inflict as much pain on the American public to get his way” has been exposed, it’s easy to see that closing the White House tours was one of the first actions he took to implement that policy. Juvenile behavior, yes.

A recent email I’ve seen makes one wonder how all of the signs the National Park Service placed nationwide were ready and waiting within hours of the shutdown. The government can’t contract, order, deliver, and put in place anything within hours unless it was waiting in the wings.